(light music) - Greetings, my beautiful lovelies. It's Emmy. How are you? It's great to see you, and welcome back to another
episode of Hard Times, where I explore recipes that
come from times of hardship. Today we're gonna be going
to the Depression era, it's around the 1930s,
to make Hoover stew. Now, this stew got its name
from President Herbert Hoover. And because he was US
president at the time, he was often the one
that was given the blame to all of the terrible woes of the people during the Great Depression. Because so many people lost their jobs, they also lost their homes and shanty towns began appearing -- these were called Hoovervilles. Newspaper was called Hoover blankets and cardboard was called Hoover leather. And this recipe is called Hoover stew. It is a very simple stew made of things that are relatively inexpensive and can feed a crowd of people. So, I'm gonna be making it today. Down in the description, I'll put links to the references I used
to create this video. And the recipe I'm gonna be testing today comes from "A Coalcracker in
the Kitchen" by Lori Fogg. Again, I'll put a link down below. Alrighty, let's go ahead and get started. One other thing, if you've missed my other recipes from Hard Times, I will put a Hard Times
playlist down below as well. Alrighty, let's go ahead and get started. So right here, I've got a bunch of water
coming up to a boil. (This is salted, by the way -- I always try to boil my
pasta in salted water.) So, now that it's going vigorously, I've got a box of elbow macaroni... right into there. And it says to cook it
for eight to 10 minutes. So give that a little
stir so that the pasta doesn't stick to the bottom and that there is water
surrounding the pasta. We're going to be
rehydrating this dry pasta. So we're gonna cook this for eight minutes or until it's almost fully cooked. We're also gonna cook it in a sauce, so that's why we're taking
it out a little bit early. While that comes up to
a boil and cooks away, we set that aside for a minute. So the other ingredients for this recipe are a can of tomatoes -- this is a big can; this is 28 ounces -- and a regular-sized can of corn. But the notes in the recipe say that you can add pretty
much whatever you've got. If you wanna add some onion, if you wanna add some fresh pepper, basically any little bits
that you've got around, you can toss into this stew, including an extra can of beans or any other kind of canned
vegetable you've got. But the recipe specifically
says these two things. And a package of hotdogs. And this particular ingredient reminds me of one of my first Hard
Time recipes I made, and it was by Clara. And she had a channel here on YouTube that focused on the
recipes that she remembered from the Great Depression. Clara unfortunately is no longer with us, but her videos live on along with all of her
stories and her recipes. So let's go ahead and cut up our hot dogs. Now this also reminds me of Clara because she talked about using hotdogs because they were inexpensive, and she sliced them into very thin coins, which this recipe also says to do. Makes sense. If you cut them thinly, you get a larger pile seemingly enough. Even though it's the same amount of meat, kind of stretches out the protein. So coins -- I'm gonna
cut these pretty thinly, like this. Okay, so that's about
a quarter of an inch. Cut these up. Now, using this knife
reminds me of Clara also because she talked about
in one of her videos, and in fact I think in all of her videos, she cuts with a paring knife, just a knife like this. And she cuts over the pan like this, right onto her thumb, which always makes me a little nervous 'cause I feel like she's
gonna cut her thumb, but she never did. And she said this is
what her mother would do. Just cut right over the pan like this. No need to use a cutting board, just cut right over the pan. Using a bigger knife and
cutting three at once seems a little bit quicker. And I've gotten a lot of
comments in those videos when I mentioned her cooking like that, saying, "Oh yeah, my grandmother
used to cut that way, too." Super sweet. All right, now we're
going to drain our pasta. Oop, lost a couple. That's all right. And I'm gonna use the same pot. So I'm gonna save also the cooking liquid in case we need this
to be a little soupier. So, the original recipe says to just dump everything in
together with the macaroni, but just to give things
a little bit more flavor let's go ahead and
brown our hotdog pieces. Just to get a little caramelization. And because hotdogs are so salty, I'm not gonna add any additional salt. But also in the note of the recipe, it said that you can add
black pepper if you like, Italian seasoning, anything you have that will make this tasty to you. So I'm definitely gonna
add a black pepper. So, let's go ahead and do that. So to the hotdogs. We're gonna add one can of drained corn and one big can of stewed tomatoes. Woo! This is gonna make
a lot of food (chuckles). And we're just gonna stir this up. Let this cook for a few minutes so that the flavors can kind of meld. The corn, of course, is already cooked and so is the meat. So at this point, we're
just getting everything happy together. Now the hotdogs have
plenty of salt in them so I'm gonna wait to add any salt. And I also salted the pasta water, so that should have some salt in as well. So we're gonna turn up the heat and bring this to a simmer. It's colorful at least, hey. And it makes a lot. So let that cook a bit. All righty, let's check on
the tomatoes and hotdogs. So everything is bubbling
and simmering away. And now that it's heated up, it's released a lot more juice. So that's gonna be kind of
like the sauce for a pasta. Okay, now we're going to add our macaroni. Uhh, this is gonna be
a tight fit. (chuckles) Oh! (laughs) If you don't want that
to happen to your pasta, you can rinse it with some cold water or you can add a little bit
of olive oil to your pasta so it doesn't stick. (laughs) That was funny. I lost a few. All right, so now we're
going to just gently fold everything together. Because it's elbow macaroni pasta, I automatically think cheese. So if you had some cheese, I think that would probably
a great addition to this. Even if it was grated Parmesan, just something a little extra to give us a little bit of richness. But we're just gonna have it like this because that's what the recipe says. But the recipe said also, this is the recipe to use all the little bits up in your pantry, in your refrigerator, whatever you've got, and that's it. That's our Hoover stew. All righty, let's give this a taste. (light hearty music) All righty! Let's go ahead and give
our Hoover stew a taste. It certainly makes a lot, doesn't it? It's hot, it's steamy. It's colorful. Make sure you stir it to get
all the way to the bottom because the pasta at the bottom is gonna be softer than the pasta on top, because it's absorbing
all of the tomato juices. All righty, there it is. All righty, let's give this a taste. Make sure we get a bite with everything. Itadakimasu -- oops! Dropped some of my corn. All righty, (laughs) my
first taste of Hoovers stew. Itadakimasu. It kind of tastes like
what you would imagine. It definitely doesn't need any salt. There's plenty of salt in the hotdogs and we salted the pasta too
while we were boiling it. So definitely salty enough. The hotdogs give it a
little bit of a smokiness, mm-mmm, and garlic-y flavor. Of course, meatiness, too. Because we use chopped tomatoes, they aren't like a tomato sauce, so they add a tomato flavor
without it being so strong like a spaghetti sauce. It's kind of a light tomato flavor. And the corn's in there, but I don't really taste the corn because it's kind of
sparsely distributed in here. Okay, let me get some corn. Hmm, I don't really taste the corn as much as kind of feel it. As I'm biting it, there's
kind of a succulent kind of crunch and like,
oh yeah, that's corn. And then you get that
canned tinny corn flavor, which I happen to kind of like because growing up we ate
canned corn pretty infrequently. And so when I had it, I remember my mom, she would open up the can of corn, drain the water out, and I would steal the little
nibblets out of the can because they just tasted good. There was something about
that canned corn flavor that I really liked as a child. Yeah, I don't know. At any rate, you can
definitely taste it in here. This is a very humble recipe. It would fill your belly
with lots of pasta, carbs, and protein. It's easy to make. It feeds a crowd. Is it delicious? Hmm, it's fine, but as I said it checks off all the boxes
of giving you some vegetables, some starch, some protein,
definitely enough salt. It feeds a lot of people and it's relatively inexpensive, so definitely does the job. There you have it. Hoover stew. If I were to make this again, I would definitely
recommend adding a teaspoon of dry Italian seasoning mix or dried basil or dried oregano, or thyme, some kind of dry herb would be really great in this or fresh herbs if you've got it. Something to add a little
extra facet of flavor to this. Even something like an onion
or cup of cloves of garlic or something like that just to add some additional complexity. Because really this is
hotdogs and macaroni, that's what it tastes like, with tomato to kind of
round things out a bit. The tomatoes lend some acidity to it, but yes, it could use more for sure. But seasoning goes a long way. All righty, my lovelies,
there you have it. Hoover stew, an inexpensive
meal to feed a crowd. If you are interested in
other Hard Times recipes, I will put a link down
below to the playlist. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed that one. I hope you learned something. Please share this video with your friends. Follow me on social media. I love hearing from you. I love your suggestions. Like this video, subscribe, and I shall see you in the next one. Toodaloo! Take care! Byeee!!! (light music) (upbeat music) Hoover stew kind of reminds me of, like Hoover vacuums. And they're like, (imitates revving sound) Was that a vacuum cleaner sound? That sounded more like, I don't know, swarming bees or something.
